BmoreArt

Last week I had the pleasure of participating in The Contemporary’s first artist retreat. The first, I hope, of many. For four days, 50 artists from Baltimore joined dozens of “consultants” and “guests” that included national arts professionals and artists, representatives from nonprofit organizations, gallerists, curators, and critics at a Jewish retreat center with a farm in rural Maryland. The program included presentations from artists, numerous panels and workshops, and one-on-one meetings; all catered towards networking or “this weird vortex hellhole that is professional development for artists,” as director Deana Haggag described it. What follows is a diary assembled from the notes I ended up scribbling near-constantly.

If you’ve ever wanted to get up close to “The Port of Rotterdam” by Paul Signac without visiting the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, now’s your chance.

The Google Cultural Institute has begun archiving famous artworks with gigapixel images, which contain over one billion pixels. You can now zoom in on images of paintings by Van Gogh, Pissarro, and more down to the brushstrokes. Google sees these documents as a tool for conservators, and also a chance to replicate the experience of seeing an artwork “in person”. Walter Benjamin is rolling in his grave. [Google]

Art activist group “BP or Not BP” has staged an intervention at the British Museum, protesting BP’s sponsorship of the show “Sunken Cities”. Activists say that the sponsorship legitimizes the oil company as a leader of climate change. [Hyperallergic]

We haven’t listened to this podcast yet, but it sounds interesting. Museums are increasingly buying contemporary art, which some consider a gamble, as what does well on the art market might not have much cultural weight in a permanent collection in a decade or two. [Quartz]

Legendary LES squat/art space ABC No Rio will be demolished soon. The current historic building is structurally deficient, but the collective has raised funds to replace it with a new, hyper-energy-efficient structure, so all is not lost. [Curbed]

“The fragility of freedom is the simplest and deepest lesson of my life and work,” wrote Fritz Stern, a leading German Historian who died in his home in Manhattan at the age of 90. He spent a lifetime trying to understand the circumstances that lead to Nazi Germany. [The New York Times]

Arthur Fellig, A.K.A. “Weegee” was a crime reporter who captured a lot of New York’s colorful streetlife and nightlife in the twentieth century. An exhibition focused on his photos of the Bowery of yesteryear will be opening soon at Mana Contemporary, and it looks like it’s going to be a fun show. [ArtAsiaPacific]

Pyotr Pavlensky, the Russian protest artist who famously nailed his balls to the Red Square, has had a rough year. He’s in prison, where he alleges he was beaten by guards so severely they broke several ribs. [Artforum]

And today, Russian courts convicted Pavlensky for his involvement in protests agains the Putin regime’s invasion of the Ukraine. [ARTnews]

And in other Brooklyn controversies, social media is super pissed about news that Williamsburg’s Hasidim are receiving a disproportionate share of New York City’s Section 8 housing vouchers. This anger is largely attributed to the fact that the insular religious sect owns so much property in the city, and as landlords, are blamed for escalating rents and gentrification—particularly against people of color—all while providing low-income housing for members of their own religion who opt not to work. Here’s the exposé that started it all. [New York Daily News]

Our good friends at BmoreArt shared this GIF today and it’s amazing. Danny DeVito (star of another, NSFW GIF of the Hump Day) looks exactly like all the women who’ve been in the art world since the good old days that I want to be when I grow up. And based on DeVito’s skill at bypassing schlocky expressionist paintings in favor of an air conditioner, he’s a critic after our own hearts.

Art Basel Miami Beach doesn’t technically begin until next week, but myriad satellite fairs, pop-ups, and exhibitions at institutions and artist-run spaces have pretty much turned Miami “Art Week” into a season unto itself. For Miami locals and those who want to check out more than just what you can see at the fairs, this is the guide for you.

Artist Ana Teresa Fernandez has used sky blue paint to “erase” a portion of the US-Mexico border wall. [Phoenix New Times]

The internet is obsessed with @_zolarmoon right now, who has captivated Twitter with a long-form narrative spread across over 150 tweets—she’s Shahrazad in stilettos. The account is supposedly non-fiction and begins with the narrator working as a waitress at Hooters. At the invitation of a customer, she departs for a Florida strip club and an insane misadventure that involves seedy motels, prostitution, thousands of dollars, a man jumping off a balcony, human trafficking, and murder. The general consensus across social media is “someone turn this into a movie.” [Complex]

Read this account of Paul McMahon and Linda Mary Montano’s trippy performance at McMahon’s retrospective at 321 Gallery in Clinton Hill. When I was staying in Montano’s old home upstate, I had the pleasure of visiting McMahon’s studio. One takeaway from that trip: McMahon’s work is smarter, funnier, and more biting than many of his “Pictures Generation” peers but refused to be “clean” or “gallery-ready” enough for the market of the 70s/80s. Today, it looks just great, and will probably be getting more of the attention it deserves. [ARTnews]

What is the digital art market value of the “Pepe the Frog” meme? How would such a market even operate? These are questions posed to real-life art world people after months of internet users creating a parody Pepe market. God, the internet is weird. [Buzzfeed]

Wednesday night, Toronto-based artist Abbas Akhavan received the Sobey Award—a $50,000 prize and one of the largest cash awards available to Canadian artists. He beat out IMG MGMT artist Jon Rafman (Quebec), Sarah Anne Johnson (Prairies and the North), Raymond Boisjoly (West Coast/Yukon), and Lisa Lipton (Atlantic). [The Globe and Mail]

Is it possible to come up with more reckless, socially irresponsible and just plain dumb art project, then a performance that includes setting fire to all of your student loan money? According to Central Saint Martins art student Brooke Purvis, the brainchild behind this work burning all this cash serves a higher good. “I could give that money to charity, but charity is capitalism’s solution to the problem it creates,” Purvis told Vice. “But it’s my money, remembering it’s a fiction, and like anyone, I choose to do what I want with it. Also, I believe I am doing something positive with it. The work I’m creating highlights what I believe to be very important issues.” [Artnet newsvia: VICE]

Kerr Houston has a nice, easy-to-read musing on the often uncertain relationship between contemporary art and the general public: “To claim, then, that contemporary art no longer shapes or defines our collective values is effectively to argue that our collective values cannot embrace diversity, or complexity” [BmoreArt].

Robin Grearson talks to artists in Gowanus who are being evicted from their space. [Hyperallergic]

“This fair isn’t about making money” (e)merge art fair co-owner Helen Allen told me last night. According to Allen, it’s more about building community, a point evident in the attendees. Walking through the halls of the Capital Skyline Hotel in Washington took several hours last night, as everyone seemed to know everyone. (e)merge is the definition of a community-based fair.